


12% Spirit

by namarupa



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Shiganshina Trio, hints of relationships, read for some flashback to happier times, squad shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 14:03:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18033116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namarupa/pseuds/namarupa
Summary: Connie masterminds an alcohol heist in the aftermath of battle. The squad make camp, people get drunk, and Sasha can't get away from Captain Levi. Set Post-Stohess operation.





	12% Spirit

**Author's Note:**

> As mentioned this is set after Annie's capture in Stohess. Canon divergence for the presence of Nanaba in Stohess, and for the fact that our group of soldiers are travelling at a leisurely pace and news of the breach/Titan attack comes a little later. I wrote this a few years ago and took it down for reworking. Now that things have really gone to shit in the manga this fic reminds me of more hopeful times when I had believed the manga might end well for some of my more favourite characters. Heck. Enjoy.
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> **Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of Isayama Hajime. I am in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.**

 

 

When the Survey Corps went on that long ass trip to Wall Sina they didn't really expect any good to come of it. The sentiment was a sort of defense mechanism, drilled into them by virtue of dozens of unsuccessful expeditions. The Corps' particular brand of fatalism sank deep, into the very marrow of every soldier ever inducted into its ranks. Nobody expected results, they merely grit their teeth and hoped for the best. It was what they were good at- hoping.

* * *

 

Captain Levi ducks into Kirstein’s carriage ten miles outside of the Stohess military checkpoint. Kirstein’s angles are too sharp- cut glass, less hungry. Nobody who’s seen Yeager up close would believe this stupid ploy, but that’s all it is: bait. They have a bigger fish to catch. 

He offers Kirstein water and Kirstein declines. His hands are shaking too much to hold a canteen much less bring it up to his mouth. The Captain debates helping the boy, maybe taking him out for a stretch. But they can’t risk the exposure so Kirsteins stays, propping his fists on his thighs, counting infinitesimal grains in the floorboards.

“Well, have it anyway.” He sets the canteen down and nudges the door open. A tiny shaft of light pierces through the cheerless space. The blackout windows really do their job.

“Captain?”

“What?”

Kirstein profile turns in his direction. There is a bellicose air about the set jaw, one Levi associates with seething frustration, which he has grown accustomed to but does not enjoy. What comes after such displays are usually the hardest questions he will ever have to answer.

“Do you think Annie might give up..on her own?”

Ah, no. The Captain sighs internally. Not this again. An animal stares out of Jean Kirstein’s eyes, backed into a corner, too angry for pain and too tired to weep. Frightened children, he thinks exasperatedly, I keep leading frightened children into war.

Reassurance is one thing. Facts are another, and the reality is this: They are walking into a district that has never been breached, bringing chaos and destruction in its wake. They will uncloak, unleash hell on a people that have forgotten the acrid taste of fear, and some are going to die.

Kirstein sits across from him, ten miles short of a federal offense. Hanji is crouching on the rooftops of Stohess with fifty foot steel nets. Yeager, Ackerman and Artlet are risking their lives in the bowels of the city. None of them are safe, and death, Levi has learned, is hardly selective.

“We’re a little past those kind of questions Kirstein. Drink your water,” is all he says.

* * *

 

“Stings a little, doesn’t it?”

Blouse looks up from the blade she’s been polishing. She’s not sure to which Kirstein referring, the cut on her temple or the stink-eye one of the MP liaisons is shooting her.

Kirstein forgoes enlightening her, choosing instead to scuff his boots on the cobblestone. It’s been three days since they’ve brought down the Female Titan. The higher ups have neglected to prep them on follow up measures, so while Yeager, Ackerman and Artlet and everybody else on a higher pay scale are stuck in debriefing, the junior corps are less-assigned-and-more-fobbed-off to the supply depot by the south square, not ten meters from where Annie had turned herself into a giant popsicle. 

Well, they’ve since carted her off to god knows where but some of the MPs are still staring slack jawed at the Titan-sized craters she and Yeager’d left behind.

Kirstein doesn’t remember much of Trost. Most of his memories include terror pure and blind, choking on his own globby spit and damn near pissing himself, a secret he will carry to his deathbed. The rest involve Marco, and that too Kirstein will never mention to a living soul, but if he digs deep enough he can remember pale civilians offering him things to eat, things they can ill-afford to spare, thanking him with grateful eyes if not words.

All they’ve got from Stohess so far are pissed off Wallists and not even a thank you from citizens who'd never before seen a walking nightmare eat its way through half the neighborhood.

Kirstein had asked Nanaba about it.

“In Stohess's defense, Jaeger and Leonhart did have a literal grudge match that laid waste to a big chunk of the district,” she’d pointed out, with the air of someone stating the obvious. She’d made Kirstein feel a centimeter high, like the old Kirstein hankering after riches and soft sheets. Well look, is what he’d thought she could be saying, if you were in their position would you react any different? And Kirstein had to admit; the Kirstein before Trost, the Kirstein before the Corps? Not a rat’s chance in hell.

But still, Nanaba had said, patting Kirstein on the shoulder, not so much as a newsletter detailing their exploits. The Roseans would have thrown flowers- in the heydays before half the Roseans got eaten up by Titans and the other half by politics- and now for the Marianese it was more grab what pretty weeds you can find in the rubble and crack and toss those instead, but at least they tried.

“Sina just gives us arseholes rolling out red tape like carpets and an inquest,” Rashad from Squad Four had chipped in with a sniff. His official summons had finally turned up and he wasn’t looking forward to speaking at length in front of statesmen.

Kirstein shakes his head at the memory and resumes his survey of the pavement, counting the tiles still bearing the bloodstains of corpses, only to stumble when Springer cannons into him from behind.

Kirstein hisses, “What the fuck-” catches Blouse’s raised eyebrows and bites his tongue. He sidesteps, twists his torso and grabs Springer in a headlock. Kirstein has never been hit by a charging bull before, but he thinks this comes close. Springer’s egg shaped head is dangerous, even if what’s inside it doesn’t always come up to scratch.

“Ah Jeanie boy, don’t be such a sourpussy,” Springer whines while trying to dislodge Kirstein by hooking his feet at the back of Kirstein’s ankles. Sneaky assrat. Kirstein, the son of a baker, tightens his grip.

“Guys, come on.” Blouse slots the last of her blades back into her canister and stands up. “Its lunch time, lets get us some vittles before they run out.”

“Yeah Jeanie," Springer coughs, clawing at Kirstein's hands,"quit- _urgh,_ fuck- quit horsin around and let me go.”

“Why you little!” Kirstein brings a knee up but Blouse's callused hands remove his hold on Springer easy-as-you please. She steps in between the two. "Stop it, the both o' ye."

Kirstein braces himself for one of her rare beatdowns; her fists leave bruises for days. Sasha instead cuffs Springer around an ear. "And you. Leavin me with all the equipment cleanin, sneakin off doing god knows. Without me! Eggshit!"

Springer grins ruefully, massaging his flushed appendage. "Sorry 'bout that, Sasha. You see I happened to hear somethin' interesting on my way to the relief distribution center."

Blouse and Kirstein exchange glances. Kirstein can practically see the gears turning in Blouse's head as she weighs the pros and cons of putting off lunch. "Go on," he tells Springer. "Make it quick."

"Went down the alleyway past the fountains an' all. You know, quicker than jamming up the bridge with all the civilians."

Kirstein sighs. Why does he even try?

"The point, Connie. The fucking point."

"Okay. So I went to the- sorry Jean. I overhead some guys talking about the Relief Act an' all. Said some Lord somethin or other was getting damned tired of sending all his prime cut meat and grain and coin to the packrats in the outer cities. So I go up to these guys-" its then that Kirstein realises Springer is in civvies "-and ask them about this Lord and his tiredness. They tell me he's hoardin shit and not just his own, his other fine friends have stuff stashed in his secret cellar. I tell them, 'you just give me a name and an address and maybe me and my friends could do somethin about it'. So..."

"So?" Blouse asks.

"So...." Springer trails off. "I got us a name and an address."

(There is a word for reward, for a measure of peace, a teind to balance the heaping of blood and flayed muscle on the other side of the scale, for a big effing middle finger pointed straight at the upper tier, thumbed noses and trigger finger ready, a word to stow away the thought of leeches woefully ignorant, smug in their blindness-

and that word is _booze_ .)

Which is why one very exasperated nobleman is currently demanding answers as to how his heavily guarded cellar is now empty of all traces of produce and alcohol, except for one measly bottle of cider worth a few copper coins, and all his supposedly impenetrable guard are bound and gagged and knocked out cold.

Springer and Blouse had let Kirstein take the lead and he took great pleasure in kicking the guard leader's feet from under him, and then ramming him into the floor. Didn't help the leader's case, wearing the uniform of Sina's best and finest- the Military Police's badge was smooth and neat under Kirstein's palm as he dragged the greasy bastard back up for round two. But it sure helped Kirstein bury some old ghosts, and a shitload of post-battle aggression.

* * *

 

Blouse rides pillion behind Kirstein while they use her steed as a pack horse - not that being loaded with a sack full of vintage is any different from the horse’s point of view. That's where Blouse always stashes her steals after a larder raid.

Captain Levi says nothing about their little escapade, taking one second to observe Springer’s puffed up chest and squirrel cheeks lifting in grin after grin, ‘You should have seen Jean, he went boom, and then pow!’ as Eren Yeager laughs for the first time in days.

They make good time, halfway to the safehouse at the edge of Karanes by the time dusk falls. Erwin calls for them to set up camp and the first thing Springer does is break open the bottles. Hange laughs when Springer, assigned packing duty, confesses that he forgot to ask the MP's supply officer for tents but took as many cups as he could. Ackerman is the first to actually drink whatever it is that he pours into her cup, a sip enough to furrow her brow.

“This doesn’t taste good,” she tells Artlet. They both peer into her cup, apprehensively eyeing the yellow liquid. The smell wafting up to tickle-no, punch their noses is not encouraging. Artlet wishes he could shut his nostrils in self defense but that would be rude to Springer, who is looking extremely satisfied.

“Taste doesn’t matter,” Springer says. “Back home we had a brew that tasted like horse piss and smelt like rotting feet.”

“Why drink then?” Ackerman is disgusted. She has actually smelt rotting feet and is sincerely questioning Springer’s life choices right now.

Springer leans in, like he knows a secret they don’t.

“For the burn, of course.”

It’s hard to explain that burn. A good speech could set a fire in your belly. A lover’s thighs could set your heart racing. But nothing, nothing ever comes close to being utterly, completely intoxicated by beer and wine and cider, brew mixing and going down your throat and shutting off your mind to all things except ‘when is the next round coming?’

“Guys, guys,” Artlet croons about an hour later, cradling his cup to his chest, “how did I ever live without this?!” Afterwards Yeager joins Kirstein in song, warbling along to Kirstein’s off-key tenor in a horrific duet. In the thick of it all, Ackerman asks Springer to pour her another and gulps it down to the cries of "Chug! Chug!".

Erwin sips some fine '72 red and watches the fire play into the night while Nanaba occasionally draws constellations in the dirt for Hange to guess. Levi quietly adds an extra star to each of Nanaba's diagrams when Hange isn't paying attention.

Once or twice someone looks up and clocks everybody’s position, just to make sure nobody has wandered off on an alcohol buzz. It's not the first time some frustrated young hotheads have made off with spoils from the capital. Erwin once tried to explain the concept of Hoodism to some of the old squadrons (in a rare scholarly mood) but back then they had waved him off and, in Levi's case, stared at him until Erwin had to back away. Mostly everybody was too hell bent on getting drunk up to their teeth to care about using their wits, and Erwin Smith had to get used to occasional lapses in judgement.

This new special squad are piss poor drunks.

Their intolerance for alcohol would have been hysterically funny but this current batch of recruits also carried the name of 'Starvation Generation'. Most of them grew up as excess mouths to feed until they drafted, farmed barren earth, broke stone in quarries or perished in the mountains. Starvation Generation. The name followed them like long suffering stink.

Each week the Corps have one half day allotted for rest and Artlet and Blouse would sometimes spend it trading scavenging stories in forests of different types, one with trees and the other with stone and both with animals. People wished they’d just die already, but no one said it aloud because on principle you weren’t supposed to wish a fellow human being ill. Resentment leaked through eventually, like pus from a blister, in the most cruel and hurtful of ways, because what did other people matter when you had your bed and your bit of bread and your fire, let them rot into the earth like all the rest-

-and watching Ackerman attempt to balance on her head while the rest her team members surround her singing kumbaya gets as unfunny as a funeral pyre pretty damn fast.

A beast like Ackerman taken down by a bottle of wine. Lightweights. Nanaba shakes her head. Case in point, Blouse trips on her own two feet and falls, cup in hand, right on top of the Captain. He looks down at his shirt, at the beer soaking the material and at the drunk girl on his lap.

“I do not appreciate this,” he says.

No one laughs.

Out loud at least.

For about six seconds.

Then Ackerman flops to the ground and shrieks with childish glee and all hell breaks loose. The young corpsmen drop to their knees and howl, that little alert switch that usually goes, 'danger, pissing off the Captain involves shovelling all kinds of shit and scrubbing the latrines' completely shut off courtesy of fermented hops and grapes.

Whoever said eating your fruits and veggies would give you a long life?

Even if Erwin, Nanaba, and Hange take great care not to snort too loudly, the damage is done. Levi’s reputation demands payback. But Blouse looks at her empty cup like a mournful puppy and Levi only sighs and pushes her off until she collapses at his side, a heap of addled limbs and a mess of acorn hair.

All of a sudden Kirstein is sobbing in deep ugly breaths and nobody is laughing any more.

"S-sorry," he gasps, clawing at his hair. "Sorry, I just-"

The Captain gets up, grabs a change of shirt from his pack and disappears into the shadows. Blouse's hand hangs motionless in the air where it lost its hold on Levi's shirt. She blinks at it several times and then watches as it falls, and turns to Hange in confusion. Hange only shrugs.

"Marco never had alcohol," Springer mutters thickly and goes to Kirstein. They cling to each other in the silence as Kirstein clutches at Springer's shoulders and tries to muffle his crying by burying his head in the lapels of Springer's jacket.

Across from them, Yeager clasps the chain around his neck and sits down with a thump. His discomfort is obvious. Nanaba has never seen him cry, never even seen him spare a moment in tenderness for Ackerman, and she being his sister at that. All he has is that manic focus. Tunnel vision enough to rival Commander Erwin.

Ackerman crawls over to him, and Nanaba, watching them both, wonders if it not in fact discomfort, but plain helplessness, two halves of a third who have given too much too soon. Maybe they can't afford tears any longer.

Nanaba erases her diagrams, scuffing the dirt with the bottoms of her boots, and leans in to confess to Erwin, "I'm glad Mike isn't here to see this."

Erwin agrees with a nod of his head. Mike would have joined them and then drowned them all out.

"Remember what I told you about, Eren? The ocean?" Artlet suddenly asks. His mind is far and away, dreaming about new horizons, something Erwin Smith is too old to think about.

Nanaba's head snaps up quicker that one could blink. If the sky is her love, then the ocean is her faith. She once stood up in mess hall proclaiming to all and sundry that her fishermen brothers would one day catch their fortune in a body of water stretching out further than the eye could see, with-

"-with fathomless depths and creatures no human could even dream about. Creatures with bulbous heads and limbs that twist and turn without rhyme or reason." Artlet rambles on, sing-song, a comforting voice rising and falling in tandem with the sounds of Kirstein's grief. He sounds like my father, Erwin thinks.

"Tentacles, " Nanaba supplies, eyes gleaming.

"Tell us about the Dead Sea," Ackerman urges.

At that, Kirstein breaks away from Springer with a soft apology. It’s hard for them to meet each other’s eyes but Springer clasps the rear of Kirstein's neck and squeezes briefly. Connie was never good with words. When he was younger everything was a hug and a kick and a screaming match and blunt questions, no lines scuffed in the dirt, no boundary between too much and not enough. Kirstein will take what he can get though, and he squeezes back.

"The Dead Sea is a misnomer."

"A what now?"

"A wrong name for a thing."

"You mean it's not dead?" Kirstein asks.

Artlet pauses. You could be cruel in your knowledge. Grandfather's words as he handed him that book, so mesmerizing they might as well have been fairytales.

"The magic of the Dead Sea is in its salt content." Then, as if he's reciting a well-read passage, he says carefully, "a term known as hypersalinity, which enables a swimmer to in fact float effortlessly. However the extreme levels of salt prevent most living things from existing.”

“Oh,” says Kirstein.

“...Except those too small for the eye to see. There was a word for those creatures in the book, but my grandfather blacked it out. I could never decipher it."

The fire crackles as a breeze lifts the smoke in another direction. Artlet picks up a twig and chucks it into the flames.

Erwin feels almost voyeuristic watching the byplay of expressions on their faces. They’ve been baptized by trauma, speaking language based on eyebrow tics and clenched jaws.

"Actually, it's a lake," Eren says. "That's why it's a misnomer. The Dead Sea is a Live Lake."

"That sounds nice." Hange says.

"Do you think a Tentacle would taste good?" Sasha asks, sitting up with a clumsy movement.

"I've come to think anything would taste good according to your shitty palate, Blouse," Captain's voice rings out and just like that the special squad come close to something resembling attention, regardless that their Commanding Officer has been sitting in their midst all this time, and the Captain folds his smelly shirt and hands it over to Blouse.

"When we get back you're going to wash this. If the smell isn't gone by the time you've finished, Springer is going to sit on you while you do your morning push-ups. For all of next week."

Months ago, this would have incited some form of protest or horrified gasps. All Blouse does is heave a relieved sigh that it isn't as bad as the time Mikasa (unknowingly or knowingly, she still refuses to tell) filled the stable bucket with soapwater to clean the officer’s windows and had to run a lap backwards. In Captain’s defense, he only very sarcastically suggested that she give it a try, but then she went and passive-aggressively did it on her hands. Blouse wouldn’t touch what’s between the Captain and Mikasa with a ten foot pole. Sleeping dogs ought rest, is her opinion.

Levi turns to Hange, by rights on a higher rung then him, and then at Erwin but they just shrug their shoulders and tilt their heads: they're your kids, you tell them, is what they're saying. The orphan in Levi almost instantaneously curls away from this implication of 'your kids'. That would imply a relationship exists. Relationships are...difficult.

"Alright”, he claps his hands. “Help Springer clean up and go the fuck to sleep."

"Wait," Artlet says, "I'd like to propose a toast."

Levi sighs and orders Springer to redistribute the cups and pour out whatever’s left of the beer.

"To Marco."

Nobody drinks. Erwin's tumbler now holds a mixture of warm wine and warmer beer. Nanaba hates alcohol. Springer catches Hange's eye and tries to hide the fresh onslaught of tears.

Sasha gets up on unsteady legs, tottering forward until she's beside Levi. Across the fire, Kirstein raises his cup high and toasts the night.

"To Marco," Mikasa echoes, and tosses her cup's contents into the fire. It flares and hisses briefly, and then one by one, they come forward to make their tribute.

Names float upward to join their owners. Kurt. Samuel, two of them. Mina. Xing Peng. Amantia. Iman. Bettina. Fritzel. Yusef. Elena. Many more, too many for the young ones to hear, but hear they do. To Springer it half sounds like a death knell, like the Sina child screaming into his ear as Eren’s Titan tackled Annie’s into the ground, their combined shadows locked in battle, darkness big enough to blot out the sun for one terrifying moment. Worse than the clang of the Wall church bell as it crashed into the courtyard where the lovers were idling. He thinks ‘what the actual fuck am I still doing here,’ again and again.

And there’s Yeager, half the cause of all that carnage, silent stoic Annie the other half, Yeager who leans forward and thinks it's good reason to fight till the bone shows.

Levi says nothing.

His names sink far beyond his reach. He has a stick in his head and it is frail with the notches carved into it. His only consolation is that so far no one has ever accused him of having one up his ass. He's sure everyone's thought of it at least once, though.

But maybe, just maybe tonight's enough...maybe he'll let slip a few things. Things about Eld, who probably led Special Ops better then him, a better man in general, that crazy motherfucker Oluo and his misguided aping, who taught Levi how to properly knot a Waterfall and gave him his secret recipe for shoe polish. About Petra, trying to juggle loving and killing in the same headspace; a born pacifist, a molded warrior. And factual Gunthar Schultz, who in a fit of rage tried to make a list of all the possible ways he could be killed-and got lucky first time, if luck meant Titan fodder.

Maybe Levi will apologize to Mikasa for having the audacity to believe them similar. For using Eren against her. It's the last thing a person with even the least semblance of morals could want but honestly it feels less alienating to have another body in the pits of hell with you. He'll say he's prejudiced against the name Ackerman. He'll say he wishes all Ackerman's were alive, maybe that would solve a lot of things for her. Then she'd punch him quicker than he can block and maybe that could solve a lot of things between them right now.

Blouse whines for more food, moaning aloud about her queasy stomach and the morning-after headache that’s sure to follow but nobody really listens to her. In the morning, Levi will go fishing in the stream he found, and take her along. A girl like Blouse would have eaten raw catch before, she'll drain and gut it and bite into the belly and skin like it's nothing. Her wants and needs are simple and about half of them are reachable and what that does is simplify interactions with her a whole lot more, so much it feels like he's communicating with dredged up ghosts of other acorn haired jokers.

The Captain's very aware that he has a skewed perspective on things, but he thinks changing his own behaviour isn't going to fix the immediate problem of the Titans or the deeper, rotting mystery of the capital and those occupying it.

The Captain's job is to Get The Job Done. It's recently that the man Levi has spent more time wondering when exactly the paradigm of his job scope has shifted to include mentoring his squad members beyond how to severe a Titan's joints and sanitary measures against diphtheria.

And children are harder to manage than kill strikes. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, because then they've never seen children attempting kill strikes.

Springer and Kirstein have had the luxury of a relatively normal childhood. It makes it both harder and easier to deal with them. Maybe the Captain will tell them, "At least you have a mother with a working heart," and hope for the best. Maybe pat them on the back or something, as if having a living parent is damn fucking congratulatory. Maybe it is. The Shiganshina district could vouch for that. Yeager could say it fifty times over to Kirstein's face without a break. Levi would love his mother if he had her back, and the truth is maybe that would solve a lot of things for him too.

The new squad drag their blankets in a pile some distance away from the fire, sulfur a circle around them, sleeping back to back with their superiors without being told. They've opted for the most understaffed entourage there ever was, but sheer simplicity is a trump card that no one would ever expect of Erwin Smith. He trades in plot twists. Blazed through Stohess and next thing you know he's strolling through forest country in peasant's clothing with gear all packed away, out of sight? He'd played the politicians walking into Stohess like that. Once you start expecting things of men like Smith and Pixis you've lost the game before the dices have finished rolling. 

It's a bit awkward for Blouse who gets the Captain on one side, but the beer soaked shirt is fresh on her mind and she keeps her gaze on the sky, willing sleep to come. Yeager is smack dab in the middle between Ackerman and Nanaba, Erwin at the end.

Teeth chattering aside, it's only Yeager who wants a conversation. He and Nanaba speak in an undertone that mostly everyone else who's awake chooses not to hear, and Nanaba keeps a hand on his shoulder like she would her youngest brother (and Nanaba feels that sinking feeling that it's never going to be enough), while Mikasa snores lightly into his back and Armin curls up around her with his head buried in her scarf.

Annie’s motivation, the resignation towards her duty. Did she enjoy it? Did she regret it? Was it worth it, Annie?

Nanaba knows he’s not talking to her anymore.

Was it worth it after all; because he saw that final reach towards freedom, is what he wants to say. The outstretched limb. Her face in tears at the end. Did she fail? Did she want to?

Eren answers his own question. “It doesn’t matter. She did it anyway.”

Kirstein, thankfully is not awake to hear Eren, otherwise he might have tackled the boy and slapped him silly. Kirstein has no qualms dealing out justice to enemies of humanity. Someone who willingly causes carnage and death is no friend in his eyes. Nanaba has heard reports about him. For all his sheltered childhood he's transitioned easier to the cut throat life of the military better than Eren. Or maybe he processes things easier than Eren, files them away for later contemplation, discarding what's unnecessary beyond here and now.

But is that better? Nanaba can't say.

In the deep of the night, when the leaves rustle only from a breeze and nothing else, and crickets chirp louder than animals scurrying amongst the forest bed, Blouse groggily awakes to find herself half sprawled over the Captain, chest to chest and hip to thigh, and in the dead-stillness meets his opened eyes.

"This is a nightmare," he whispers.

She shuts her eyes.

It's a good thing for that wine, is Levi's last thought before he too, falls asleep, his last conscious image that of Erwin sitting up.

Daybreak comes too early for Kirstein as Hange splashes the contents of their waterskin over his face.

"Am I dead?" he mutters.

"Close enough," Hange replies, extracting his share of breakfast from Blouse's pockets. At the sight of the hard bread and smell of the pungent dried meat, Springer heaves a breath and staggers away.

"Eat?"

"Blergh," Kirstein answers.

"Let this be a lesson to you, young Kirstein," Commander Smith approaches in uniform, as pristine as if he hadn't spent the night with twigs poking new indents into his backside.

Kirstein scrambles to his feet and salutes, looking distinctly off-shade.

"Never drink a bottle of wine unless there's a whole afternoon to sleep it off ahead of you."

"Amen," Nanaba says in the distance.

"Amen," Yeager echoes.

From the trees, Sasha sidles up to them in a way that has Kirstein on high alert as his mangled head will allow.

"What's the matter?" Armin joins their little circle.

Sasha hunches and bites her lips, wild eyed and horse-skittish and steps real close to Mikasa.

"Nightmare."

Hange lets out a screech, the sound echoing up to the sky like the small column of smoke from the dying fire as the Captain strides past, lips twitching, the gear in his arms polished to the nth degree.

**Author's Note:**

> Comment, Kudos, Flame, etc. Let me know what you think :)


End file.
